Home Schooling Resources

Thank you to my friend and expert home-schooler, Vanessa Smyth (who has homeschooled her two teenaged boys since they were very young), for most of these suggestions and her commentary about them. If you have any to add, please send email to suggestions@kidsoutandabout.com.

Sites about Home Schooling

• National Home Education Network - From their web site: "The National Home Education Network exists to encourage and facilitate the vital grassroots work of state and local homeschooling groups and individuals by providing information, fostering networking and promoting public relations on a national level."

• Home School Legal Defense Association - They handle legal issues for homeschoolers all over the country. Seems to be geared mostly for Christian homeschoolers, although their site says they are nonpartisan.

• The Well-Trained Mind - Classical education and home schooling information, guidelines, and links for home schoolers, afterschoolers, and other concerned parents.

• Hometaught - Gail Winthrow's Home Education web site. She lists an Objectivist approach to homeschooling.

• Homeschooling Fathers - This site is for father who homeschool their children; it's a subpage of fatherville.com.

• Pennsylvania Homeschoolers - This is a Pennsylvania homeschooling site, but it has good information, and Advanced Placement (AP) test prep courses.

• Objective Education.com - Objectivist orientation, based on Leonard Peikoff's Philosophy of Education.

• Home Schooling Social Register - Parents can sign up for any region in the country, and be on the local list of homeschooling parents.

• Home schooling audio programs - Download interesting audio programs about home schooling.

• ParentsPlace.com, homeschooling board at iVillage - Every Wednesday night, from 9-11PM Eastern time, there is a homeschool chat at parentsplace.com. This page has a direct link to the chat..

Free Education Info Sites

• The Learning Page - The Learning Page of the Library of Congress.

• College Board - PSAT/SAT information and signup.

• RefDesk.com - A search engine to find facts on the net.

• Renaissance Artists - A site to see paintings from Renaissance artists.

• The History Net - Resource for history research.

• The Mental Edge - Reviews of subject matter for third grade and up. You have to subscribe, but it looks useful.

• Ibiblio.org: The public's library and digital archive - This is a wonderful site for teaching art history. It has copies of famous paintings and historical information about them, plus biographies of the artists. When Vanessa's kids were young, she used this site along with a great masters coloring book to teach beginning art history.

• "About" page for homework help in biology

Supplies, Curricula, & Classes

• Wonder Homeschool - A parent-to-parent resource on holistic homeschooling and educating with wonder. Wonder Homeschool features over 200 pages of articles and resources to help your family find the right methods, get started in homeschooling, and stay inspired. Focusing on Waldorf, Multiple Intelligences, Unschooling and Multiple Intelligence theory, the site features a curriculum guide that also lists the many holistic curricula now available to homeschoolers.

• Berry Best Preschool - Preschool curricula and supplies in kit form

• Homeschooling Curriculum Review - See what parents have had to say about many different curricula across subjects. Or write your own and post it!

• Homeschooling resources on Geocities - Wonderful, comprehensive list of homeschooling vendors on the net.

• The Furious Shepherd - Links to homeschool resources.

• http://www.carolina.com - A great resource for science and math information and supplies.

• http://www.class.com - Offers virtual school classes over the internet.
  

• The Teaching Company - The Teaching Company offers great courses on video and tape. Lin Thompson's videos on world history are wonderful!

• Friendly Chemistry - This is a chemistry course. Vanessa hasn't tried it so she can't recommend it personally.

• Hometrainingtools.com - Affordable, and often hard to find materials including home school science curricula, home school science supplies, home school resources, science fair projects and microscopes. Christian perspective.

• Homestead Books - Bookstore for new and used books

• Home-schooling.org - More online courses for the upper grades.

• TheBackPack.com - My favorite site for used textbooks. They have new curricula too.

• The Wild Goose Company - Science materials.

• Atlases and Geography - Source for geography curricula.

• Critical Thinking Press - Vanessa likes these workbooks.

• Lego - You can actually incorporate Legos into your homeschool curriculum! They're great ways to learn about pulleys, gears, etc. and they have design packages too.

• Original Sources.com - This is one you have to subscribe to, but it's inexpensive and contains the source documents for most everything you could want. It's great when you're teaching, for example, history, and you can get a copy of Hammurabi's Code when you come across a mention of it. They even have a lot of the writings of famous authors.

• Cuddle House Academy - Homeschooling/preschooling resources for home schoolers, nannies, preschools, day care centers, etc.

• The-Book-Peddler.com - Homeschooling supplies, many from a Christian perspective. "It is better to build children than to repair men."